St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-08-13
The Flames Were Discovered at 9 Last
Night and Were Not Out at 8
This Morning.
One Man Driven Crazy By His Losses
Some Narrow Escapes Of
the Firemen.
4 Freight Train Ditohed in Indiana and
Halt Dozen People Badly
Injured.

bell in the city hall tower doomed out
the number of box ga fire in the
business center of the city, Four hours
later the square bounded by Fifth,
Wood, Smithfield streets and Virginia
alley was smOuldering ruin, and ST.
100000 worth of property had been con-
sumed. 1t was the most disastrous fire
since the great Pittsburg riots of a de-
cade ago. The flames started in the
rear of the Masonic building, presuma-
bly, in the basement OF Campbell &
Dicks carpet store. On three sides
were solid brick buildings forming a
quadrangle, encOmpassing quarter of
an acre of tinder boxes.
ALARM AFTER ALARM
followed each other, and within forty
five minutes five districts were on the
ground, but hose, and engines. and
trucks, and axes were powerless to deal
with the blazing furnace that glOwered
and seethed defiance to two score nOZZleS
in the hands of hundred firemen. On
the east side was the l0ftieSt building in
the city, the Hamilton, which lowered
nine stories above the flames that licked
its base. Seven stories from the ground
it presented
SOLID WALL OF BRICK,
which offered no opening for the fire.
men to work upon that side. The front
on Fifth avenue prevented an advant-
ageous placing of the firemen, and with
the roaring fire increasing in volume
and extent at every second, there were
but two sides at which the fire
men could work. One of
these, narrow alley, and with
all the odds against them the firemen
seemed to have been called to hopeless
contest with the flames. But they
rallied on the second story roofs at the
west side, while a half-dozen streams
guarded the front on Fifth avenue.
The pipemen could not get within
hundred feet of the fiery crater.
Though at work at some elevation from
the hottest of the fire it singed their
hair and scorched their eyeballs, but the
laundering engines seemed to be but in
idle play for all the headway made
against the fire. There was not much
wind and the sparks and burning
FIRE-BRANDS SHOT OUT
from the pit of flames and scared lazily
over the roofs of the business blocks on
both sides of Fifth avenue. On every
roof for two squares were men with
buckets and extinguishers putting out
the sparks and brands that dropped in
a heavy shower over buildings for a
solid square. The livid tongue of
flames seemed to attact half the city.
Fifth avenue, a narrow thorOughfare,
was one solid, impossible jam. Through
this crowd the fremen had to lay their
lines with the aid of squads of police
men, who alone could enforce respect
by the free use of maces. Section after
section of hose was bursted by the high
pressure under which the engines were
working, difficulty that was increased
by the tramping of thousands of feet
upon the lines. At IL p. IN.
THE sURGING FLAMES
rolled in ascending bellows to the height
of the roofs upon which the pipe men
were stationed, and it then seemed that
the destruction of the entire
block and $4,000 900 worth of property
was inevitable. 1t was at this hour that
the Hamilton building, five stories
higher than the structures which fianked
it. caught fire from the cracking area
of white-hot Goals that glOwed along
side The longest ladders were far too
short to reach the elevation at which the
second stage of the cOnfiagration began.
The Hamilton structure extends ell
tirely through the block to Virgin
alley. A long ladder was run up the
area and detail of firemen slowly
of hose. When the fifth story windows
had been almost reached the water was
turned oD at frightful pressure. The
shock almost hurled the men at the.
nozzles from the ladders. The wriggling,
tOrtuous hose writhed in their grasp.
To release it would have been to have
stripped those lower down from the
ladders. With rare resolution, how
ever, the men directed the stream
toward the flames, though every
moment they expected to be hurled to
the pavement.
In this desperate position they clung
for fully four minutes before the eyes
of the horror stricken crowd. The word
reached the end of the line and the
wicked stream was cut off. By this time
the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of
the Hamilton building were ablaze and
no stream of water could more than
touch the fringes of the flames along the
lower side.
THE DISPATCH BUILDING
was then only separated from the. fire
by an intervening structure, the Schmidt
'& Friday building. The printers in the
fifth story, almost suffOcated by the
roasting sOrroco that drove throug gh the
windows, abandoned their cases
and stampeded down the stairs.
Across the street was the
headquarters OF the Associated
press. The roof had caught several
times from flying sparks, but was eXtin-
guished by the sentinels stationed aloft.
Finally, with the heat too intense to be
longer endurable, and with the tele-
graph wires cut and useless, the force of
operators were sent to theWesternU Union
main Office which temporarily became
the headquarters of the Associated
Press. At this hour, 2:3O a. M, the
flames are under control, but the fire is
not extinguished The Hamilton build
ing. Masonic hall, and number of
tenement houses in Virgin alley are
totally destroyed. The three upper
stories of Schmidt & Fridays nine
story building are now in flames.
The lower stories are so damaged with
water that the loss could not be much